Ted Cruz Announces Presidential Bid

Texas Senator Ted Cruz announced his bid for the White House on Sunday.

“It’s a time for truth, a time to rise to the challenge, just as Americans have always done. I believe in America and her people and I believe we can stand up and restore our promise,” the Republican senator said in a video. “It’s going to take a new generation of courageous conservatives to help make America great again and I’m ready to stand with you to lead the fight.”

In December, Cruz defied party leaders to force a vote on opposing Obama’s executive actions on immigration. The strategy failed, and led several of his Republican colleagues to call Cruz out. “You should have an end goal in sight if you’re going to do these types of things and I don’t see an end goal other than irritating a lot of people,” Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch said at the time.

“Cruz is going to make it tough for all of the candidates who are fighting to emerge as the champion of the anti-establishment wing of the party,” GOP strategist Kevin Madden told AP. “That is starting to look like quite a scrum where lots of candidates will be throwing some sharp elbows.”

“He’s awfully good at making promises that he knows the GOP can’t keep and pushing for unachievable goals, but he seems very popular with right wing,” added veteran Republican strategist John Feehery. “Cruz is a lot smarter than the typical darling of the right, and that makes him more dangerous to guys like Scott Walker and Rand Paul.”

Let’s be honest, GOP strategists and many GOP politicians are pitiful. Just look at their past record. They don’t have an end game. They make promises they won’t keep. So why should anyone trust them regarding these things?

While Cruz’s voting record in the senate has been pretty straight down the line and overall he has been a great senator, the issue of his citizenship is the real issue concerning his run for the office of the president.

Neal Katyal, acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, and Paul Clemente, solicitor general in the President George W. Bush administration, wrote in a joint article, “There is no question that Senator Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a ‘natural born Citizen‘ within the meaning of the Constitution.”

Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and former solicitor general Ted Olson — who were on opposite sides in Bush v. Gore among other cases — co-authored a memorandum in March 2008 detailing the above legal explanation in the context of John McCain’s eligibility. Recall that McCain — lately one of Cruz’s chief antagonists — was born to U.S. citizen parents serving on a military base in the Panama Canal Zone.

In other words, anyone who is a citizen at birth — as opposed to someone who becomes a citizen later (“naturalizes”) or who isn’t a citizen at all — can be president.

So the one remaining question is whether Ted Cruz was a citizen at birth. That’s an easy one. The Nationality Act of 1940 outlines which children become “nationals and citizens of the United States at birth.” In addition to those who are born in the United States or born outside the country to parents who were both citizens — or, interestingly, found in the United States without parents and no proof of birth elsewhere — citizenship goes to babies born to one American parent who has spent a certain number of years here.

That single-parent requirement has been amended several times, but under the law in effect between 1952 and 1986 — Cruz was born in 1970 — someone must have a citizen parent who resided in the United States for at least 10 years, including five after the age of 14, in order to be considered a natural-born citizen. Cruz’s mother, Eleanor Darragh, was born in Delaware, lived most of her life in the United States, and gave birth to little Rafael Edward Cruz in her 30s. Q.E.D.

In the end, while I think Cruz has been doing a good job as senator, I don’t believe he would have met the definition of the “natural born citizen” laid down by the framers of the Constitution.

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